Cisco to Repatriate $67 Billion Under New Tax Law

Cisco Systems has unveiled a plan to bring $67 billion that it holds overseas back to the United States this year by taking advantage of the recent rewrite of the tax code.

The repatriation is planned for the company’s third fiscal quarter, Cisco said on Wednesday while reporting its second-quarter earnings.

Other companies have presented similar plans to repatriate foreign cash holdings. In January, Apple announced plans to bring the vast majority of its $252 billion in cash held abroad back to the United States, paying a tax of $38 billion.

In its earnings statement, Cisco reported its first rise in quarterly revenue in more than two years and forecast that profit in the current quarter would exceed the estimate by analysts. It said its yearslong efforts to transform from a network gear maker into a software-focused company were beginning to pay off.

“We are clearly seeing the results of the strategy we’ve articulated over the last 10 quarters,” the company’s chief executive, Chuck Robbins, told analysts on a call after the earnings were announced.

Cisco raised its buyback program by $25 billion, taking the total to about $31 billion. However, the new tax law led to an $11.1 billion charge, pushing the company to post a loss for the second quarter, which ended Jan. 27.

The company posted a net loss of $8.8 billion, or $1.78 a share, in the quarter, compared with a profit of $2.3 billion, or 47 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned 63 cents a share. Revenue rose 2.7 percent, to $11.9 billion.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of 59 cents a share and revenue of $11.8 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Investors were pleased with the news. Shares of Cisco, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, jumped 7 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.